by K. M. Fawkes
Out of habit, he checked in the kitchen first. As he’d expected, it was pretty much empty—people typically didn’t leave too many supplies in their rental or vacation homes. Anna was right. At some point, they were going to have to go into the city for a bigger looting trip. They could look for clothes and boots and more medical supplies. But that could wait until spring, for sure.
Something skittered across the floor in a breeze that blew through the broken windows and he stepped back instinctively. When he saw that it was just a candy bar wrapper, he should have felt better, but he didn’t. Another glance around the room showed more wrappers and two empty cans of beans. There were also several dented cans without pull tops. Someone had been trying to get into them, unsuccessfully. What was left on the sides of the cans that were open wasn’t entirely dried out. Someone had been here fairly recently. Maybe the crazy furniture-collecting looter was still around somewhere.
He pulled his gun out and began to walk through the house, cursing himself for not clearing it first. Lee would be furious with him for ignoring such a basic rule of staying safe. And Sammy and Anna would be all alone if he died out here.
Suddenly, he wished he’d dealt with his cabin fever and talked to Anna. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about what had happened between them. Hell, he didn’t either, if he was perfectly honest. But clearly, they needed to get it out in the open. If they had, he’d be in his own cabin right now, instead of out here freezing while he looked through an abandoned cabin for a possible maniac.
He checked the rooms one by one, shoving the doors open and going in without trying to be quiet. It was sort of like hunting near a bear. Whoever was in here, he didn’t want to take them by surprise. He’d used the gun once. He didn’t want to have to do it again.
There were three bedrooms in the cabin. The master bedroom and the attached bathroom were empty. The mirrors over the sink were shattered and so was the one on the back of the closet door. Brad considered that a good thing; at this point, if he’d caught sight of his own reflection, he probably would have dropped dead of a heart attack.
The next room was smaller and just as empty. So was the main bathroom down the hall. His pulse rate was starting to slow down as he walked through and found no signs of life. There was only one room to go.
The last bedroom, overlooking the backyard, had apparently belonged to a boy around Sammy’s age. When Brad opened the closet door, he could tell that there were a few things he could take back to the boy. As he reached for a pair of jeans, he saw something that sent his heart pounding again.
Movement behind the curtains. He’d gotten distracted again. It was mostly annoyance with himself that made aiming the gun so easy this time.
“Get out of there,” he said, holding the weapon steady. The heavy drapes moved, but whatever was hiding in them didn’t appear. “Now!” Brad snapped. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
The curtains parted and he found himself staring at a young girl. She was around Sammy’s height, which made her about two feet shorter than Brad. Her eyes were wide and she was shaking so hard that the curtains were practically vibrating around her.
Shit.
Brad wanted to lower the gun, but he had to ask her some questions. “Are you alone here?”
She nodded and tears spilled down her cheeks, following in the tracks of tears she’d clearly shed earlier.
“Is anyone going to come looking for you?”
She shook her head emphatically, her thin, blond hair haloing out in a puff of static electricity from the thick curtains she’d been wrapped in and the cold winter wind that came through the broken window at her back. She had a white-knuckle grip on the fabric.
He knew that he should have asked more questions, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He put the gun back in his waistband and pulled his outer coat off, holding it out to her. She shied back, pressing her back against the wall.
“It’s okay,” he said.
She shook her head again. Her lips moved, but her voice was too low for him to hear what she said.
“Come on, kid,” he said. “You’re freezing.”
It wasn’t surprising. Every window in the house was broken, the wind was beginning to blow in what looked like a precursor to another storm, and she was wearing mesh sneakers, blue jeans, and a thin jacket. She looked tempted, but she still didn’t move.
“It’s okay,” he repeated, using the same gentle-but-firm tone that he had used on stressed-out animals in his clinic. He could only hope it would have the same soothing effect on her.
“We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, did we?” he asked the girl, giving her a quick smile and waiting for her to acknowledge his question. She gave another shake of her head, but this one was slower. It looked like she might be starting to relax just a bit. “My name is Brad Fox,” he said. “Will you tell me what your name is?”
When he continued to hold out the coat and wait patiently, she inched one pale hand out and took it with a darting movement. “Martha,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, assuming that he would look less intimidating if he wasn’t towering over her. “It’s nice to meet you, Martha.”
She didn’t reply to that as she pulled the coat on, burrowing into its warmth. The girl was as skinny as a rail and his coat just about swallowed her as she pulled it tight around herself. The sleeves came down over her hands and she crossed her arms, gathering as much heat as she could.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. She nodded slowly and he said, “There’s some jerky in the right inside pocket of the coat.”
This time, her movements weren’t hesitant. She tugged the coat open and plunged her hand into the pocket he’d mentioned, dragging the bag out and pulling it open. She stuffed two pieces into her mouth at once and began to chew as fast as she could.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.
“Yesterday,” she said as pushed another piece into her mouth.
He gave her a smile. “Slow down just a little, okay? It’s not going anywhere.”
When he reached for his backpack, she stepped back again and he stopped. “I’m just going to get you some water,” he said. “I have a whole bottle of it in my pack. Is that okay?”
Martha nodded slowly. Brad didn’t miss how carefully she watched him when he opened the backpack, or how relieved she looked when all he pulled out was the bottle of clear water. He handed it to her and she took it just as quickly as she’d taken the coat. As if she was afraid that he was going to grab her.
“Did you eat those cans of beans?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
Brad allowed her to finish another piece of jerky before he asked, “How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“A few days,” she corrected, taking a long drink of the water.
“How did you get here?”
She didn’t answer; she just continued to drink from the bottle. He didn’t know if she was gulping down water like that because she was thirsty or if she was taking such long drinks because she didn’t want to tell him the truth. Either way, the water was good for her, and he could wait.
When she finally had to come up for air, he asked, “Have you been alone long?”
She looked over at him and then quickly looked away again without meeting his eyes. She shook her head. Then, she nodded.
“I’m waiting,” she finally mumbled.
“What are you waiting for?”
“My family.”
That surprised him. “Where are they?” When she didn’t reply, he tried a different question. “Did they tell you to wait here?”
And if they did, he thought angrily, what in the hell were they thinking?
He supposed it was better than leaving the girl out in the elements, but only just barely. The temperature in the house was a few degrees warmer than it was outsi
de, but it wasn’t nearly warm enough to leave her here with nothing more protective than what she was wearing. If there was another snowstorm, it was going to blow right through those broken windows and she was going to end up with frostbite for sure. Or worse.
“No,” the girl said.
He bit back his frustration at hearing yet another one-word answer. He knew that the kid was scared. The thing was, he was scared, too. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising again with every second he stood there and he didn’t even know why. Something about the place just felt wrong. And that meant that he couldn’t leave her here to face whatever it was.
“Do you know where they are now?” he asked.
“No,” she said again, tears welling in her eyes once more.
Brad pushed his hand through his hair and sighed as he stood up again. “Okay. Then how about you come with me?”
Her eyes went wide with fear and she backed up again, seemingly trying to press herself through the wall.
“It’s not just me back home,” Brad hurried on, trying to make her feel better about the idea. “There’s a woman named Anna and her son, Sammy.” He saw a flicker of interest in her face at hearing that, so he went on. “I came out here looking for things for him, actually. Sammy’s probably around your age; he just turned nine.”
“I’m ten,” Martha said.
He was happy that he’d gotten more than one word out of her. “Pretty close, then,” he said. “So why not come back with me and wait there? It’s a lot warmer than it is here.” He gave her a smile, trying to hide his emotion as he realized the unavoidable truth: Martha’s parents were never coming back for her.
Her voice wavered as she spoke. “No.”
Brad knew two things. Pushing her wouldn’t get him anywhere. And she was very tempted by his offer.
“Can you tell me why, Martha?”
Martha’s chin trembled and she took a deep breath, giving him her longest sentence yet. “I can’t go with you because then they won’t know how to find me.”
He privately wondered why she thought that they’d be able to find her here, since this apparently wasn’t where they’d left her, but he didn’t get into it. It wasn’t the time or the place. And he was getting damn near desperate to leave.
“I can leave them a note,” he said. “Then they’ll know where you are and that you’re safe. And I can come back in a few days to see if there’s an answer—how about that?”
She wiped her face, eying him with a combination of hope and suspicion. “Really?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
After a long moment, the kid nodded. “Okay.”
“Great. Why don’t you put some of these clothes in this bag while I write the note? That way, I don’t have to go back to Sammy empty-handed.”
She nodded and he left her to it, going down the hall to grab a piece of the paper he’d seen scattered over the living room floor. He opened drawers in the kitchen, sighing in relief when he finally found the junk drawer and a few pens.
He wrote the note as promised, hurrying it so much that his handwriting more resembled his father’s untidy scrawl than his own writing.
I found your daughter, Martha. Our group will take good care of her. We’re in a cabin up the road. I’ll be back in a few days to see if there is a response. Leave me directions to where you are and I’ll find you.
It wasn’t much, he knew, but it was about as much information as he was willing to leave out for any random survivor to find. Especially with the glass-breaking, furniture-collecting people that had clearly been in the area. Furthermore, in the unlikely event that her parents looked for her here and discovered his note, he would much rather go and find them than have them come and find him.
He laid the pen down by the paper and then put the rest of paper and pens he’d gathered into the backpack that Martha handed him when she stepped into the kitchen. Sammy could use them for his lessons. Brad glanced in and saw that Martha had pretty much cleaned out the closet. It wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun to carry such a heavy pack, but he appreciated how thorough she’d been, anyway.
“Okay,” he said, zipping the pack up and slinging it over his shoulders. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 8
As they got deeper into the woods, Brad realized that he was actually grateful for the full backpack—even if it was presently digging into his shoulders with every step he took. At least it kept part of his upper body warm. Two layers, no matter how good they were, weren’t enough to keep the chill away, especially since it had begun to snow again.
The shelter of the trees would have kept the majority of it off of them if it had been like the first snowfall, but it wasn’t. The snow was thicker, heavier, and harder. He was actually pretty sure that there was some hail mixed in. The outskirts of the forest that they were in was no match for it, and he felt it sting his face and neck.
Brad turned to Martha and pulled the hood of his coat up, tightening it around her face. “Keep your head down,” he said, speaking more loudly than he wanted to so that she could hear him. “And stay as close to me as you can. Yell if you need to stop and make sure that I hear you.”
The girl nodded, pushing her hands down into the coat pockets and beginning to walk when he did. He hoped that he would be able to hear her if she spoke and reminded himself to check on her much more frequently than he would have checked on Sammy. She was just so damn quiet and the wind that had been increasing all day was now wailing through the trees that surrounded them.
That wasn’t the only source of noise, either. Ice splintered on the swaying branches above their heads and built up snow thudded to the ground all around them. There were the sharp snaps of limbs cracking, too. Luckily, they were in the distance, but he knew that it was simply luck that it wasn’t happening right next to them.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Martha was still behind him, walking close enough that his body shielded hers just a bit from the wind. At least, when it stayed consistent in one direction, which wasn’t often. She wasn’t moving as fast as he would have liked, but there was nothing he could do about that.
Darkness began to fall and, like the backpack, he was grateful for it even if it was inconvenient as hell. There was only a sliver of a moon to begin with, and with the storm, it couldn’t give any light. Although they had stumbled along the miles back home, he felt slightly better. Between the storm and the darkness, it would be extremely hard for them to be seen.
That thought had circled his mind since he’d entered the unfamiliar areas of the woods today. He poked at it once again, asking himself questions, trying to interrogate his intuition. Seen by who? What kind of person would be out here watching him in this weather? Or at all?
He couldn’t even answer those question in his own mind and it was frustrating. The soldiers had serious reason to dislike him, but from what he’d seen, they weren’t the type to stalk and play mind games. If they’d seen him, they would have shot him, simple as that.
The thought didn’t make him feel better. The tension between him and Anna could have been a factor. He’d always managed to put away worries like that when he was in the woods, though, so he pushed that explanation away.
Was it the bear attack? No, that didn’t feel right, either. He’d always been aware of the possibility of running into a bear. It was Anna and Sammy that had freaked out about that, not him. He wasn’t worried about any of the animals that would roam the woods out here; he knew the proper way to defend himself against all of them.
So, if it wasn’t any of that, then what the hell was it? He ran out of ideas even though he dug deep. He swore that he felt his intuition give a metaphorical shrug and he sighed in frustration.
“Thanks for all the help,” he muttered, before remembering that he was traveling with someone else. Hopefully the wind had carried away the sound of his voice before the girl heard it and became convinced that she was walking through a dark forest with a nutjob. He glanced back. Sh
e was still there, moving along doggedly.
The source of the problem could have been her. It was pretty weird, running into a kid all alone at this stage in the event. Brad didn’t like to think about it, but there must have been kids who had lost their parents or guardians. Kids that had lost their entire families and been the only ones left. Things probably wouldn’t end well for someone with absolutely no survival skills. Even couch potato adults would have had some kind of idea of what to do, but anyone under the age of fourteen would be pretty much screwed without their parents around to take care of them. The thought made him feel a little sick.
Some people might have taken them in, of course. He had taken Sammy with no qualms about the boy not being able to contribute much. But there would be plenty of other people who wouldn’t have. People like the woman he’d seen on the interstate who would see another mouth to feed as a drain on supplies rather than a moral and ethical responsibility.
Anna had a bit of that same attitude, he realized. She was paranoid about supply shortages. She was also obsessed with making sure that she contributed enough to show him that she was a very useful person to have around. Was that why she’d returned his kiss that night? The idea was like a rock in his stomach.
He shook his head, focusing on the problem at hand. The sooner he stopped thinking about the kiss, the sooner their relationship would return to normal. What was she going to say when he showed up with another kid? The scenarios that played in his mind weren’t pleasant. He stopped looking forward to seeing the lights of the cabin and began to dread it just slightly.
What should I have done, left her there to die? He practiced his arguments as he walked with his head down against the snow. That one might be a little harsh, so he tried again. She was all by herself and she doesn’t know where her parents are. There wasn’t any food left in the cabin. I couldn’t just leave her there all alone.
There. That sounded much more reasonable and less accusatory. He’d have to walk a fine line, but Anna wasn’t a bad person. And she was a mother. Surely she would come to understand why he’d done what he’d done.